Now I wonder how warm my WDWE can be without the harddrive will suffer. Currently I have set the fan to be turned on at 55C. But the fan is running to often. How do you feel this hack is working for you? What are your drive temperatures? How high do I dare to set this value?

Can I run the fan at other speeds than 0,50,100? Is it possible to run it at 25% speed?

As I wrote the guide and the temperature monitor, I might answer as well :)

The specifications for these drives say that the operation temperature is 0-60&deg;C. If your drives are constantly running hotter than 55&deg;C, it might not be healthy for them.

My MBWE is located in a closed cabinet with my dsl modem and a gigabit router. The idle temperatures (drives spun down, fan not spinning) for the drives are ~38C during night and ~43C during day (much more traffic through the router and the modem -> the cabinet gets warmer). When the drives are spinning and in use, the temperatures almost never rise above 50C. The drive closer to the mainboard runs always a few degrees hotter than the other, probably because the cpu is warming it.

I have replaced the original 40mm fan with two quiet 120mm fans, one blowing air into the MBWE from the top and the other sucking from the bottom. I have also removed the metallic cover from the top of the drives in order to improve the airflow. (the modification is ugly as hell, but it doesn't matter since my mutilated MBWE is hidden in a cabinet and it seems to be working and completely silent :)

You can set the speed of the fan with

echo [number] > /sys/devices/platform/wdc-fan/speed

Where [number] is the desired speed. I haven't tried other speeds than 0, 50 and 100 so I have no clue whether they will work.

Thank you for the reply, my drives almost never go below 50C. I have been thinking about replacing the 40mm fan with a larger fan. I will probably try that. I will also try with a few different values of the fan speed. I might even add a few extra steps in your script. Maybe ten different levels of temperature and fan speeds.

It's strange that my drives are so much hotter than yours… Maybe we have different drives?

It seems like the only valid speeds are 0, 50, and 100. If I echo 40 the speed will be 50 and so on…

Maybe someone can rewrite the drivers to be able to handle other speeds? I guess that the device would probably be able to keep the temperture at ok levels with a speed of 10.

I picked my WDWE apart and found that the fan was sucking air insteas of blowing air into the case. From earlier experiences I have found it better to blow cold air into the case instead of sucking warm air out of the case. I switched the fan around and will try this. This will however not solve the problem with a noisy fan.

It actually does so only because I have replaced the original fan with 2 x silent 120mm fans and the 50% power isn't enough to start them spinning; the script starts them up by setting the speed to 100% for two seconds first :)

If it bothers you, find the following lines in the temperature_monitor script and delete them / comment them out (remember to restart the script afterwards):

I was reading articles on the net and apparently high temperatures do NOT damage or shorten the lifespan of hard drives. Actually, they tend to take more damage at lower temperatures. This study was conducted on google's server cluster, and was posted on cnet news, so it's from a reliable source.

I have still not replaced the fan but I will try to do this soon. The original fan is very noicy. I hope to find a fan which I can have running at 50% speed continously, keeping the drives cool enough and still be able to have a quit fan.

can you post some pictures of your modification, specially a close-up of your connector on the mainboard please ? I'm asking this because in fact I've got a WDMB 500GB (only one drive) and there's no fan and I was wondering if it's possible to add one. But I don't know if the mainboard of WDMB with one drive is completely different from a mainboard with two drives.
Thanks in advance.

I don't have any pics available, but the MBWEII mainboard has a small two-pin power connector for the fan. If your mainboard is similar to http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/top.jpg, it doesn't seem to have the connector at all, so I'm guessing the mainboards for the single and dual disk versions are different (the single disk version doesn't have the other sata connector either).

However, the easiest way to add a fan would probably be to plug one in the USB port. You'll just have to solder the fan power wires to the red and black wires of a usb cable and you've got yourself an USB-powered fan.

I was going to answer to your mail but I saw that you also answered me here (I'm Frank ;) ).
So yes my mainboard is exactly the one on the picture. I thought that maybe the mainboards were practically identical and that, even if the connector is not present, there would the solder pads. I don't want to use the USB port because :
- I will not be able to plug anything else (or I have to use USB hub)
- USB only deliver 5V and the fans I was planning to use work at 12V
- I was also planning to change the fan's speed by using the script that is available inside the MBWE.